'Washington Times' Hires Sam Dealey as New Editor

The Washington Times, recently hit with a 50 percent staff cut and elimination of its top editors, has settled on a young and prolific reporter as its new editor.

Sources say Sam Dealey, 36, will be announced on Monday as the replacement for John Solomon, who left the conservative paper as the ownership, members of the Unification Church, began dismantling it.

Dealey, a U.S. News contributor, is based in Washington, writing on national and foreign affairs. Besides contributing to Reader's Digest, he writes frequently for publications such as GQ, Details, and The New York Times. Dealey has also reported from Africa for CNN and PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. He is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The Dallas native was a reporter for The Hill newspaper, an editorial board member at The Washington Times, and assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.

He takes over at a difficult time. Sources say the paper, recently stripped of sports and local news, has an unclear if uncertain future and is in the middle of a family feud between its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and the son he tapped to run it. The sources say the son wanted to shut the paper but Moon blocked that.

With just a handful of reporters left, however, the scrappy paper has broken major stories in the past few weeks.

Paul Bedard was the Washington Times White House correspondent from 1988 to 1998.

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